Lesson 1: Anthropology and the Study of Human CulturePurposeThe purpose of this lesson is to introduce you to cultural anthropology and its place within the broader discipline of anthropology. It also introduces the concept of culture, defining its properties and the analytical methods used by anthropologists to investigate it.ObjectivesAfter completing this lesson, you should be able to
Reading AssignmentHarris, Chapters 1 and 2 Suggested ReadingsHarris, Appendix, pages 273–278. Study QuestionsThese questions are designed to help you think about the material presented in the lesson. These exercises are not graded. Do not send your answers to the Center for Independent Study.
CommentaryThe readings in this lesson, especially Chapter 1, introduce the discipline of anthropology and the subfield of cultural anthropology (see also the Course Overview in the introduction to this study guide). This commentary is devoted to clarifying and expanding on Harris's discussion of the emic/etic distinction and the theoretical emphasis he places on infrastructure—points he covers in Chapter 2. The Emic/Etic Distinction Perhaps the most easily misunderstood sections in the readings assigned in this lesson, and among the most important, are those addressing the emic/etic distinction. At issue are the categories of empirical things, or "facts," of interest to anthropologists and the tests, measures, or methods used to expose them for scientific scrutiny. To a scientist, tests, measures, or methods (operations) aimed at revealing information about the external world are crucial aspects of the things themselves. The words emic and etic were developed by anthropologists to describe broad categories of both anthropological operations and cultural things. Emic Operations involve oral communications with informants and reveal empirical things that exist in the minds of natives. Etic Operations rely on categories, relationships, entities, etc., that are meaningful to a community of scientific observers. Emic operations involve oral communications with informants and reveal empirical things that exist in the minds of natives. That these things might not be identifiable outside the mind of a native informant does not make them less empirical, tangible, or real. Rather, it simply means that we must use emic operations to gain knowledge of them. An emic statement has as its hallmark the elevation of the native informant to the position of final arbiter of accuracy and relevance. An emic analysis is thus designed to elicit categories, relationships, entities, etc., that are meaningful to native informants in order to achieve an accurate description of how natives think. For example, an emic analysis of the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, discussed in more detail below, would require that we ask an Aztec about the practice. (In this case, one would need to consult an historical account giving the native explanation.) Etic operations, on the other hand, rely on categories, relationships, entities, etc., that are meaningful to a community of scientific observers. No recourse to native informants is necessary to establish the validity of an etic analysis. Instead, statements are subject to scientific canons of proof. By this we mean that terms refer to agreed upon things (entities, relationships, events, etc.), that propositions regarding causal relationships be testable, and that these tests be independently replicable. To gain an understanding of why the Aztec engaged in human sacrifice through an etic analysis, therefore, we would not necessarily require testimony from an Aztec. Rather, we would rely upon scientific theories. Before looking more closely at etic operations, and the way we might approach the question of human sacrifice from an etic perspective, please bear in mind that the terms emic and etic are not synonymous with thought and behavior, respectively, a mistake made occasionally even by anthropologists. The two most problematic categories are emic perspectives on behavior and etic perspectives on native thought processes. Both are discussed in the following sections. The Aztec Practice of Human Sacrifice Aztec and other Mesoamerican societies regularly built steep-sided pyramids topped by shrines and altars devoted to their principal deities, usually hideous serpent or feline figures. Before the altars the Aztecs regularly performed ritual sacrifices. Victims, often war captives or slaves taken from conquered provinces, were marched (or dragged) atop pyramids and laid spread-eagled on a sacrificial stone. Four priests held the victim's limbs while a fifth used an obsidian knife to extract the still-beating heart. The blood that welled up in the chest cavity was removed to a vase and was eventually used to bathe the walls of the shrines. The heart was burned in a brazier along with copal incense. Once the victim's blood and the heart were removed, the corpse was rolled down the face of the pyramid and was dismembered by a group that awaited it at the bottom. The head, skinned, was placed on a rack before the pyramid. The rack associated with the Aztec's main pyramid was said to have held 136,000 skulls. Countless more were formed into towers near the rack. The torso was removed to the zoo and fed to carnivorous animals while the limbs were taken to be eaten (stewed, apparently seasoned with squash blossom, chili, and tomato) by the group that provided the victim. To the Aztecs, all of the above (except cannibalism, which I will set aside for present purposes) was done to appease their gods, especially Huitzilopochtli, their patron deity. The Aztecs believed that without regular offerings of blood Huitzilopochtli would withdraw his support for them and destroy the world as they knew it. As long as his cravings were satisfied, on the other hand, he supplied rain to feed crops, protected against pestilence, and insured victories in warfare. An interpretation of Aztec human sacrifice based solely on this native perspective would be one formed through the use of emic operations. Science and Anthropology Unlike emic statements, etic statements are necessarily embedded within scientific theories. As Harris (page 13) notes, scientific theories consist of predictions regarding the probable behavior of observable things under a specified set of circumstances. Once these predictions are developed, tests are devised to verify that the variables encompassed by the theory actually behave in the anticipated ways. The entire procedure is designed to "prove" that our assumptions and biases are correct. These assumptions and biases, a part of what Harris calls "research strategies, or paradigms" (pages 19-20), are thus basic components of scientific inquiry. Research strategies include general statements defining the range of empirical things to be scrutinized (the science's "empirical universe") and predictions regarding the probable relationships among them. These general statements are themselves of such broad scope, covering a comparatively vast range of observations, that it is not possible to test them directly. Instead, they are used to derive specific predictions, or "theories," that apply to a restricted sphere of the paradigm's empirical universe. The everyday work of research scientists consists of developing and testing these narrowly construed theories. Harris is well known in anthropology as an outspoken advocate of a research strategy known as cultural materialism. I, too, was trained in this tradition. Cultural materialists begin with the assumption that human culture, not genetic preprograming, serves as the principal mechanism through which members of our species adapt to their physical and social environments. We assume that the global inventory of cultural traits (Harris's "similarities and differences in past and present human cultures") performs functions that are ultimately and in some measure ecological. Research is thus directed at discovering the adaptive functions of individual items of particular cultures, as well as the ways in which and reasons why these adaptations change over time. The overarching assumption guiding this research is that "culture is adaptive." While this assumption is presumably applicable to the entire universe of cultural things, it is itself too broad to be directly tested. Instead, cultural materialists use this assumption to derive theories about how restricted sets of traits serve adaptive ends. To a cultural materialist the practice of Aztec human sacrifice is perhaps best seen as the most conspicuous example of several tactics used by Aztec political and religious rulers to intimidate subject populations and potential state enemies. Unlike most empires, the Aztecs did not rule over the peoples they conquered by reorganizing their political systems. They established no colonial governments, nor did they maintain standing armies or militias able to quickly quell revolts. Instead, they simply demanded that the rulers of outlying areas recognize the Aztecs as their overlords and that they pay tribute in goods and services on demand. Refusal brought an overwhelming retaliatory response by the Aztecs, who could and did raise armies many times larger than other Mesoamerican polities. Even small apparently insignificant revolts or other acts of defiance were commonly met by the full weight of the imperial army, rather like calling out the artillery to swat a fly. The Aztec objective was not simply to suppress dissidents, but also to make an object lesson of recalcitrant subjects by demonstrating the futility and folly of defiance. Dispatching war captives on a daily basis atop their pyramids served a similar purpose. Human sacrifice offered a constant and graphic reminder, to those both at home and abroad, of the enormous price the Aztecs were willing and able to exact from would-be political opponents. Indeed, rulers of enemy states were often invited to the more exceptional ceremonial spectacles, as when, in 1488, King Ahuitzotl presided over the sacrificing of a reported 80,400 individuals over a four-day period to commemorate the completion of Tenochtitlán's central pyramid. Harris's Universal Pattern and the Principle of Infrastructural Determinism Note that the preceding explanation of the functions of human sacrifice among the Aztecs does not rely on statements elicited from native informants, who would more likely have explained the practice with reference to Huitzilopochtli's craving for human blood. To a cultural materialist, the interesting question regarding Aztec religion is why they would ever have come to worship a god with such a singular craving. To answer this question, let us look more closely at the chain of causality underlying the etic explanation of Aztec sacrifice given above. The theory begins by linking human sacrifice to a larger complex of political and economic behaviors that served to preserve the integrity of the Aztec polity, a component of Harris's structure. This polity, a highly centralized and economically stratified bureaucracy, was essential for mobilizing the labor needed to sustain the system of agricultural production that supported Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital. Tenochtitlán was situated on a small island in a shallow, internally-drained lake on the floor of the Basin of Mexico (the site of present-day Mexico City). Because the lake had no natural outlet, water entering from the surrounding mountains sat in the lake bed until it evaporated, leaving an accumulation of salts and other toxic minerals. The Aztec constructed a series of dykes that cut the lake into three bodies of water, each at slightly different elevations, and allowed fresh water to flush the toxic minerals from the upper lakes. They then excavated mud and organic debris from the floor of the lake, creating chinampas, or garden plots, rising just above the surface of the water. Chinampa agriculture in the Basin of Mexico was among the most productive forms of non-industrial agriculture and the output it yielded supported a multitude of cities, the largest of which was Tenochtitlán (which at the time of the Spanish conquest had a population estimated at between 200,000 and 350,000). Feeding this population required that the salinity of the lake waters be regulated, a feat that required the ability to mobilize and coordinate large numbers of laborers. Only a centralized political unit like the Aztecs' could accomplish this. In supporting this political unit, Aztec religion, the practice of human sacrifice, and the reign of terror it engendered played an important role in enabling the Aztecs to adapt to their physical and social environment. The Aztec infrastructure (the chinampas and urban settlement system) thus shaped the structure (the centralized polity), which in turn shaped the superstructure (the practice of human sacrifice and the related religious beliefs). Elsewhere Harris has referred to this chain of causality, which cultural materialists assume underlies most similarities and differences in human cultures, as the principle of infrastructural determinism. To understand the textbook you need to be familiar with the components of Harris's "universal pattern." My own feeling is that a "universal pattern" composed of infrastructure, structure, and superstructure, is unnecessarily cumbersome. While I agree with Harris's basic proposition that the material constraints imposed by a natural and social environment shape cultural adaptations, I prefer a more flexible approach that draws more heavily on Julian Steward's notion of the "culture core" (see the discussion of Steward in the Appendix, page 277). The most important aspects of a culture are those responsible for capturing essential resources from the natural environment (i.e., those necessary to sustain life), converting them into usable forms, and distributing them among a population. This interrelated system of technologies, behaviors, and environmental variables include what Harris would refer to as the etic infrastructure and structure. But assigning the appropriate label to a given item of culture is much less important than demonstrating the nature and intimacy of its link to those parts of the culture responsible for the capture and distribution of essential resources. Be aware that Harris's central objective is not to pigeonhole items of culture, but rather to suggest that they be viewed in terms of their ecological significance and impact. Alternative Approaches in Anthropology Many anthropologists reject efforts to develop a science of human culture. Instead, they see anthropology's central aim as the "interpretation" of emic aspects of cultures. Some of those subscribing to this view begin by dismissing the possibility of developing scientific explanations for cultural variability, arguing that human affairs exhibit none of the law-like regularities found elsewhere in the natural world. Others go a step further, suggesting that "reality" itself (not theories about reality) is nothing more than a social and linguistic construct. Accordingly, anthropologists (or anyone else) can do no more than express their own culture-bound assumptions, including the assumption that there exists an external world that can be understood by the "so-called scientific method." In either of these two perspectives, the etic approach of cultural materialism is dismissed as simply the emics of the scientific observer. Cultural materialists obviously reject each of these lines of reasoning. We assume, above all else, that an external world exists independent of human perception. Furthermore, we hold that the scientific method, properly applied, leads to a progressively more accurate understanding of this external world. Finally, we feel that it is presumptuous to assume that humans alone exist free of the constraints that give law-like regularity to the behaviors and properties of other physical entities. While this might be a theoretical possibility, it is impossible to know without first making a concerted effort to investigate the contrary proposition. That is, we must first investigate the possibility that cultural variability is caused by knowable, observable, and regularly occurring law-like processes. Cultural materialism is devoted to investigating this last-named possibility. This course presents the key findings of these investigations to the time of this writing. |